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Credit Ciril Jazbec

Where the Ice, and the Population, Is Thinning

By Andrew BorygaJan. 23, 2014Jan. 23, 2014

The landscape in Ciril Jazbec’s photographs of the Arctic is impressive, but not nearly as captivating to him as the people whose daily routines have been affected by rising temperatures and tides. “I am interested in the people,” he said. “Climate change is merely in the background.”

But when it’s underfoot, he pays attention.

His latest project, “Greenland,” made possible with funds from the Royal Photographic Society and The Photographic Angle, took him to a remote settlement of 250 people in northern Greenland known for a rare breed of modern-day subsistence hunters whose numbers are rapidly declining. Higher temperatures mean shorter seal hunting seasons — and thinner ice. Traversing the landscape by dogsled can be difficult, if not deadly.

“This small settlement might be much, much smaller in 10 years,” he said.

Mr. Jazbec avoided exotic, if clichéd, pictures, and focused on scenes that captured emotion. His goal was to document life as it was, particularly in a settlement with a life expectancy so uncertain. A similar motivation had been behind his previous projects. Before completing his master’s in photojournalism and documentary photography at the London College of Communications in 2011, a final project took Mr. Jazbec to the island of Kiribati in the South Pacific. There, he documented how rising sea levels rendered the island virtually uninhabitable, detailing the intersection of everyday life with the changing landscape.

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The remote settlement that the photographer Ciril Jazbec visited has a population of only 250 people.Credit Ciril Jazbec

Mr. Jazbec, 26, grew up in a countryside village in Slovenia. He is an avid snowboarder and fond of the environment, particularly those in the Arctic, which he believes possess a magical quality in photographs.

He could have used some wizardry to get to Greenland. Reaching the settlement took three flights, a helicopter and a four-hour sled ride pulled by Greenlandic dogs who “howl, not bark.”

Initially, Mr. Jazbec intended to focus on 10 families, until he met Uunartoq Lovstrom, 70, a tough and amiable man who was proclaimed by members of the settlement as “the Clint Eastwood of Greenland,” and one of the last traditional subsistence hunters remaining. A sense of purity attracted Mr. Jazbec to Mr. Lovstrom, who years earlier turned down an opportunity to be the focus of an American documentary on subsistence hunting because he felt it would take time away from the life he enjoys.

Mr. Jazbec stayed at Mr. Lovstrom’s home for two weeks, a challenge because he did not speak Greenlandic. He communicated primarily through body language, knowing only the word for “cheers,” which he said “about 50 times a day.”

Mr. Jazbec rose early each morning with Mr. Lovstrom for tours of the settlement or seal hunts on a wooden sled pulled by six to 10 dogs and built by Mr. Lovstrom, a former dog sled racer. Mr. Lovstrom used to travel more than 10 hours outside of the settlement to hunt, but lately he has relied more on ice fishing.

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Smoke break on a sled ride.Credit Ciril Jazbec

In April, the ice was thin in Greenland, a problem hunters like Mr. Lovstrom never encountered when winter regularly lasted 10 months instead of eight — a result of temperatures jumping from an average of minus 30 to minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit to between minus 15 and minus 25.

Thin ice, with its perils — Mr. Jazbec said hunters began falling through the ice, making longer journeys potentially deadly — is just one reason for the lack of subsistence hunters in the settlement. Sprouting small businesses that provide goods once hunted for and a changing attitude toward the culture of subsistence hunting by a younger generation eager to find larger towns and conventional jobs have also contributed.

“Not everyone in the settlement finds the changing climate bad,” Mr. Jazbec said. “It is an interesting juxtaposition from traditional life to younger life.” Even Mr. Lovstrom now regularly shops at a nearby store, though he continues to hunt for meat.

Along with landscape shots of the frosty settlement, interiors of homes, laundry lines and a few of the 500 Greenlandic dogs that provide crucial transportation, Mr. Jazbec showed the transformation of daily life. One photograph pictured Mr. Lovstrom watching one of three channels on a large flat-screen television his sons bought for him. According to Mr. Jazbec, Mr. Lovstrom watched the television for hours, particularly news coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing.

“It was absurd for me to see him watching television,” Mr. Jazbec said. “He’s sitting there on the couch, but this exotic landscape is right outside the window.”

Mr. Jazbec’s favorite photograph shows Mr. Lovstrom clad in polar bear-skin pants he wears to fend off icy winds while lying on the ice, in pain from an old racing injury, line fishing through a hole he has just made (Slide 4).

“It was one of those moments when you know you have something amazing in front of you,” Mr. Jazbec said. “His expression looks like he is dying, but it is just that he is hurting. His heart is full of life and strong will.”

Mr. Jazbec plans to return to Mr. Lovstrom’s settlement as well as neighboring ones in March. The ice may be thin, but his feelings are not.

“It’s difficult as a photographer to get close enough to someone who lets you live with them,” he said of his bond with Mr. Lovstrom and his desire to revisit and expand on the work he has already done. “It’s hard to gain trust; that’s why it’s special to me.”

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A dead rabbit lay waiting to be skinned while Mr. Lovstrom made a call.Credit Ciril Jazbec